Tag: Love

I sat upright on the examining table, the thin paper rustling under the backs of my knees. I tapped my heels against the sides like a restless child waiting for her lollipop. I wondered – at what age in child development did doctors stop shelling out candy? And how cool would it be now to have a martini bar in the waiting room.

My lungs were full. I pushed every ounce of air out from under my belly, through my chest. The room was suddenly filled with the heavy wind of my breath, penetrating the sterility of the space. The faint ticking of the second-hand on the wall inside its circle of time reminded me how slowly it dripped in these moments (but when I hit snooze – lightening speed).

The scene was all too familiar, but the butterflies still fluttered inside. I knew that soon, I would lie on that same, thin sheet of paper covering the table, my face centered under an over-sized microscope and my eyes closed – protected from a light bulb that will feel unnecessarily too bright and close to my face. The heat would remind me of the sun and carry me outside myself; I will fantasize about lying on an empty beach, back in my home town of Waikiki.

In my mind I will be a swimsuit model, lounging on a golden stretch of sand. Shirtless Greek Gods donning cocoa-buttered six-pack abs and solid forearms will deliver Mai Tais in tall, frosted glasses decorated with tiny pink umbrellas. Palm trees playing hide-and-seek with my silhouette and the waves kissing the shoreline will provide the perfect ambiance to my afternoon of adoration.

But then – fingers. The touch from someone in a white coat, professionally equipped to provide me with promises of. . . better.

“Right now, your skin is like an orange. We can make it look like an apple”, he promised. I heard the light switch click, felt the heat from the bulb disappear, then opened my eyes. The doctor gently pushed the glass microscope away from the table and extended his hand to help me sit up; as if I were a wounded gazelle shot down with the sharp-shooting penetration of his words.

Your skin is like an orange.

There was another doctor in the room. When our eyes connected, I recognized the head-nod-grin combo of promises and pity. My illusions of bikini model pretty quickly dissolved. Reality. After nine surgeries from sand-blasting in the late 80’s to the more recent cutting and laser burning, I was still Freddy Kruger – the scar-faced monster from the 1984 slasher movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy’s face was disfigured and burned; and although his character wasn’t real, I felt a kindred spirit with the man behind the mask. I felt his pain and wondered if Wes Craven, the director behind Freddy’s creation had a history of skin afflictions.

I’ve carried Freddy with me for decades. Back when everybody wanted their MTV and Madonna was Like a Virgin, he’sbeen with me – the moniker I can’t seem to shake.

Now, nearly thirty years later, no longer waking up to blood-stained pillows and having to endure weekly cortisone shots on golf-ball-sized cysts, my struggle with Freddy remains.

“Really? As smooth as an apple?” I called out the doc’s sales pitch, already knowing his answer. I learned the hard way that plastic surgeons are really just used car salesmen in nicer shoes. I was too old and have been through too many surgeries to believe such embellishments.

“Well, as close as we can get” he qualified. “Nothing is perfect.”

He was right. No matter how many doctors I allowed to pierce my invisible facial force field, I would never be completely free of scarring born from the skin disease [Acne Conglobata /Stage IV Acne Vulgaris] I’ve had since I was thirteen.

After discussing my finance options and mentally circling my work calendar with the weeks off I would need to recover, I thanked the doctors for their time, accepted their glossy brochure and slung my purse over my shoulder.

The commute home was a blur. Navigating through tears and self-assurances that there was nothing wrong with me – that I just wanted to look and feel normal, I tried not to compare myself to anyone. I searched for the answer that would never come to the same question I’ve repeated again and again – why me?

I tried to remember I was still beautiful, but the word “still” is the dagger. “Still” is one of those words with hidden agenda; threaded in a compliment with conditions. But it’s a compliment, nonetheless. I’d take a “still” over none at all.

Although it’s been a couple of years since that last consultation, I remember the comment about my skin being an orange well.

It doesn’t take much to temporarily erase years of working on personal self-improvement and esteem. When I hear of a grown woman calling me Freddy Kruger recently (true story), I allow myself to feel shitty again. Like somehow my worth and beauty are directly proportional to the levity of one cruel person’s descriptor.

Why is it for some of us – hate is so much easier to feel than love? That our inner voices of self-sabotage are so much louder than the kind and compassionate mantras we struggle to believe?

So many of us get tangled in a web of not enough – built from spinning our own yarn of self-loathing. We dream about living a different reality, instead of realizing we can tear down the cracked foundations from our past and create a new normal. Instead of being held back by our flaws, we can learn to accept them. We are all unique, beautiful creatures of this world and each of our flaws is what makes us who we are.

Having another surgical procedure on my skin is still a real possibility. But accepting the reality of knowing that nothing is perfect – that my skin will always be scarred – is more important to me now.

It’s ironic that it took someone calling me Freddy Kruger recently to remind me how far I’ve come. That no matter how much I struggle to find my inner-peace with beauty, this person’s ugly heart will always remain – and her struggles are her own.

One of the hardest things to master is loving ourselves unconditionally, and thanks to people who try and hit us where it hurts, we are reminded that we do.

Perhaps I should send my recent name-caller a thank you basket of fruit. I think apples and oranges would be a nice touch.

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“You can only lose what you cling to.”– Buddha

As I mentioned in a previous postabout letting go, it can be anything but easy. Whether you’re moving to a new town, changing careers, going through a break up, or even cleaning out your closet, change is rarely without its challenges.

Some of us have no problem moving on. Out with the old is second nature. But for others, the idea of change is enough to make you hide under the covers.

It’s been said that the only way to move forward is to never look back; that instead of checking our personal rear-view mirrors from time to time, we should bash them with a fist of determination of living the mantra “Forward, not back.”

But what if the lessons you needed to learn are still in progress while you attempt to turn the page? What if there are parts of your past that actually were life-changing, monumental events that served your happiness and soul – and you are a better person for it?

Like everything in life – the trick is in the balance.

The only person who is equipped to decipher what we ought to let go of and what we should carry with us moving ahead, is us. Most of the time, in making these choices, we are emotional, off-kilter and just plain delusional. This makes our decision making anything but rational.

Have you ever stayed in touch with an old friend and one day, after yet another shining example of why you two should have left your hang-time in high school, because you have absuloutely nothing in common?

How about when you clean your closet (or try to), and you realize half of the items cramming your hangers have not been your pant-size in years?

Whether it’s a not-like-minded friend from high school or a suit you haven’t been able to squeeze into since Murphy Brown was on the air – some of us just hang on.

However long you’ve been walking this earth – everything – every person – in your life has a story. Maybe you feel that if you stay connected to that high school friend, you’re keeping a part of yourself from a much simpler time. Perhaps tossing out the clothes you outgrew (literally) when you were younger will mean that you’ve given up on getting back in to shape.

It’s all a story.

Stories have layers.

It’s only when we’re ready to peel back those layers that we can truly evolve and move on. And if you’re not ready, then forgive yourself for the emotional abuse you’ve been creating with the expectations you should be.

This is YOUR story. Go at your own pace.

If someone is turning their page and you’re still marinating in your own shit, it’s time to stop comparing (read; Compared to WHAT?) and focus on your own proverbial book – which is amazing, heartbreaking, challenging, loving, scary, and bad ass. Just like you.

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Sometimes you read something that hits so close to home, you just have to share.

One of my fave authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, posted this on her Facebook page. Her views on spirituality and religion mirror my own, and I wanted to re-post some of her words here (full post can be found on her Facebook page), as an homage to her beautiful heart and mind.

Thanks, EG. You rock.

~ ~ ~

“When you Google “Spiritual Person”, sure enough, up comes this imagine, which I have posted below. Here we have the iconic image of the pristine and calm and perfectly balanced and totally healthy, fresh from her latest juice fast, meditating on the edge of an infinity pool – like nobody in history ever did, EVER.

Why is that perfect spiritual lady always depicted meditating on the edge on an infinity pool in absolute serenity, I wonder?

(No, I’m wrong – to be fair, that perfect yoga lady isn’t always depicted meditating on the edge of an infinity pool; sometimes she’s sitting on a bolder at the top of a mountain, and sometimes she’s sitting on a beach at sunset…but she is always shown in a state of graceful meditation, and she’s always thin and lovely, and you know she has a super hot vegetarian boyfriend, and her back doesn’t hurt, and she has never taken antidepressants or farted.)

I don’t recognize that person. By which I mean – I’ve never met her.

Because that person in that picture doesn’t exist. She is an icon – a holy relic, painted by our imaginations. (I don’t mean that the model is not real, by the way; the model is an absolutely real human being with failings and desires and suffering and hope. I mean that the picture is not real.)

The spiritual icon in this picture has never had too much wine. She’s never dropped an f-bomb at the wrong moment. She’s never said something regretful on Twitter. She’s never lost her temper. She’s never acted like a total asshole. She’s never been over-sensitive to criticism. She’s never woken up ashamed at how much she gossiped the night before about a good friend. She’s never judged anyone, she’s never attacked herself, she’s never cried in the middle of the night for no reason, she’s never failed horribly, she’s never let herself down. She’s never stopped to eat McDonald’s on her way home from the health food store (I have!). And she’s damn sure she never tried to sing “Dead or Alive” at karaoke and realized half way through the sing that she actually can’t sing “Dead or Alive” – but then decided to keep singing it anyway, EVEN LOUDER.

Yes, this lady at the edge of the infinity pool is what we think of, I guess, when we think of a “spiritual person.”

But that’s not what I believe a spiritual person is. I believe a spiritual person is somebody who is aware of a larger divinity in the universe (a source of power that operates behind and beyond all that we can see) and who wants to get as close to that divine source as possible.

I think sometimes people get mad at me for doing “a spiritual person” wrong, because they have me mistaken for “a religious person.” They believe that when I curse or drink wine that I am violating the code of conduct appropriate for a religious person – particularly for a prominent religious person, which (weirdly) people sometimes believe I am supposed to be.

But a spiritual person is not the same as a religious person.

Religion is about following certain rules regarding God; spirituality is about longing for certain experiences with God.

Religion is a way that you must behave; spirituality is a way that you long to feel.

Religion is how we talk to God. Spirituality is how we listen.

I myself have never been able to become a religious person, though, because I have not yet found the religious community whose formal rules and beliefs I can completely embrace – and yet I do believe in God, and I believe in majesty, and I believe in miracles, and I believe in our highest possible humanity, and I believe in transcendence, and I believe that my soul has meaning (and I believe that YOUR soul has meaning), and I believe in eternity…and I want to feel all those things in my life as much as possible.

So I pursue – as much as I can – the experiences that will bring me those spiritual sensations.

For the most part, I have not been able to find those sensations while sitting on the edge of an infinity pool in the lotus pose – but if you can find it there, awesome!

I have, however, sometimes felt sensations of spiritual transcendence while sitting in bars, or in bus stations, or in hospital rooms.

I have felt it when I see a friend being brave.

I have felt it when I am forgiven, even though maybe I didn’t deserve forgiveness.

“Spiritual” is not how you talk, or what you eat, or what sort of yoga you practice, or what sort of music you listen to, or how much you weigh, or whether or not you want Botox, or whether you drink red wine or kombucha.

“Spiritual” is believing in the innate divinity of every moment – and believing in the innate divinity of every moment is not something you can do WRONG. All you have to do is step off the edge of the infinity pool, and dive into the REAL infinity pool…which is all around us, sometimes within reach, sometimes out of reach.

I think sometimes people get frustrated with the term “spirituality” because they think it’s too wishy-washy. They think you’re lazy. They think you’re undisciplined. They think you’re unfaithful.

Don’t worry about it.

They don’t know.

They don’t know that there’s nothing lazy whatsoever about this path.

They don’t know that what you’re looking for is nothing less than EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE and ALWAYS.

“Be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.”

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“When you judge another, you do not define them. You define yourself.”

From our childhood playgrounds to parent-teacher conferences as adults, we’ve all been there. We learn of an opinion or judgment about us that is not only unkind, it’s just plain wrong.

As kids, discovering that negative falsehoods are being said about us can be utterly devastating. None of us want to be the outcast. All we want is to be invited to the party; to feel like we belong. Luckily, we grow into our own skin and learn who we are. Our longing [to fit in] is less about personal validation and more of a barometer for attracting like-minded people.

Being a former cocaine-snorting-nude-dancer-party-girl, I’ve been labeled Hooker, Junkie, Ho, Slut – the list is typical. Even before my nine-year career on the pole, I was on the hurtful end of verbal daggers. The skin disease on my face inspired the high school nick-name Freddy Kruger. By the time I was in my 20’s, I learned to roll with the naysayer vibe (no matter how annoying).

There’s no better way of developing personal endurance than having your self-worth tested by assholes.

So what about now? How do we, as adults handle it when dark clouds of negative people overshadow our light? I’ve recently come face-to-face with this question thanks to a grown woman using valuable cell phone minutes to slander my name.

The immediate questions are obvious: Who’s hearing this bullshit? and Do they believe any of it?

After percolating the situation and realizing the why of it all, I released my questions into the universe. The 20-something in me had a little talk with the middle-aged broad tapping away on these keys today – and we both agreed upon a course of action. I’m going to do absolutely nothing.

When it comes to negative (not to mention false) gossip about us, we need to remember: the people who know us won’t believe it, and the people who believe it don’t know us. Either way, it’s out of our control. Besides, everybody has a right to their opinion. The question we need to ask is – do we allow others’ opinions or judgments about us to influence how we feel about ourselves? We already know the answer.

Life is fleeting. It’s a beautiful struggle. There are enough land minds to survive without anyone’s assistance. Don’t make space for unnecessary bullshit. If you need a mantra to remember that, feel free to use mine: *What other people think of me is none of my business. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.